


Doppelgänger

by ShadowManShenanigans



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016), Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 02, because timelines are screwy, does Mr Priest not have a tag yet, of Dirk Gently, of Wynonna Earp, so i'm tagging it anyway, the crossover fic no one wanted, the violence isn't super graphic but there is Blood Spilled
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 17:32:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12512556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowManShenanigans/pseuds/ShadowManShenanigans
Summary: A spell gone sideways switches our favorite Revenant with one of the Rowdy 3.





	Doppelgänger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Takada_Saiko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Takada_Saiko/gifts).



_Somewhere outside the city limits of some city in some state:_

Bobo opened his eyes to a sooty van and unfamiliar bodies sprawled over his own. Since his immediate previous memory was getting something sticky and magical thrown in his face by the Earps, right before Wynonna had tried to shoot him, _again_ , the sudden intimate proximity with four complete strangers was throwing him off. Bobo sat up, dislodging the dark-haired girl who was half sprawled over him, and frowned down at himself – the jeans, boots, unbuttoned vest, and host of bracelets, none of them were his. Nor did he remember putting them on. Something shifted on his face and he swore, raising a hand to remove the black-framed glasses – the room instantly lost the fuzzy tinge he hadn't really noticed.

His swearing also roused the girl beside him, who smiled sleepily up at him for a long, uncomfortable second before her eyes widened and she began to scream.

Bobo leapt to his feet and vaulted across the van, putting his back to the wall so he could face the strangers, all of which were scrambling to their feet. The girl had stopped screaming, but her eyes were still wild and the three men with her were looking around, confused.

"What did you do with Martin?" yelled the girl, and her companions all turned in creepy unison to look at him with identical frowns.

"That's not Martin," said the tallest one. " _Looks_ like him, but it ain't him."

"That's not Martin at all!" yelled the youngest one. "He's all wrong inside! He's not like us at all!"

"Who are you?" said the last one, the question a growled warning.

 "Like you said," said Bobo. "I'm not like you." There was enough metal in the van that he could probably kill them, or at least stop them, long enough for him to make a run for it. The only problem was, he had no idea where he was running to.

Then he frowned, ignoring the mutterings of the other occupants of the van as he moved to the back doors, which were open a crack. He shoved them open and dropped to the ground, squinting at the sudden bright light until his eyes adjusted.

His jaw dropped. "Where the fuck am I?" he whispered, taking in the decrepit house to his left, the long dirt driveway to his right. An entire overgrown field spread around them, marred only by the beaten down grass by the van's venture through the tangled weeds, all of it draped with the fading dewdrops of the morning. The van had been stationary at least overnight, then, and the people in it were most likely drifters.

But more importantly, the house was not one he recognized.

Which meant.

Which _meant_.

He was _outside the Ghost River Triangle_.

 

 

_The same time, on the Homestead:_

Martin opened his eyes and found himself staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. He was too warm – it felt like one of those nights when the rain trapped him and his boys in the van on a humid night, when the heat of their bodies was too much for the enclosed space but they were past the stage of the night when being bedraggled and wet in the rain sounded like fun. His head ached, like someone had driven a pick into it and shoved something out, and he groaned as he sat up, movements hindered by an unfamiliar fur coat, long and heavy.

"Fuck, he's awake," said a voice, and he heard the unmistakable sound of a gun hammer clicking back. Martin growled, squinting through the hazy afternoon light at the shape holding a glinting, long-muzzled gun. Where were his glasses?

"Who," he said, the word drawling from his mouth as his vision swam, "are you?"

 "You're not funny," said a woman's voice. Still young, but world-weary. He could taste her anger, a surging undercurrent of stress and anxiety all layered over with a burning desire to _protect_. But she was normal, human. Eating her fears would only cause them both grief. And he wasn’t hungry. Not yet.

"That's not Bobo," said another voice, this one younger, sweeter. Not so scared, but wary.

 "Who's Bobo?" said Martin. The gun was still trained on him, and he didn't feel like risking his chances with the speed of the woman's trigger finger. The woman in question had moved closer, the second one right behind her, and he could finally make out her features.

"The guy who looks almost exactly like you," said the woman, "whose clothes you're wearing, and who was, as of a minute ago, knocked out on the floor."

Martin frowned, glancing around the room. It was furnished, but sparsely – whoever lived there had not yet made it a home. There were throw pillows and some knickknacks, but no photos. He knew there were supposed to photos, in a home, he could remember that much.

"Who are you?" said the younger woman, and his gaze snapped back to her. The gun twitched in the first woman's hands, and he tensed.

 "I am not your enemy," he said slowly, "unless you make one of me." He held the woman's gaze until she lowered the gun, and he gave a slight nod. His head ached.

Then he realized _why_.

 "No," he whispered, eyes going wide as he staggered to his feet, stumbling under the weight of the coat and in the unfamiliar boots. The women stepped back, that gun rising again, but he stepped past them to move to the window, wrenching the flimsy drape aside.

No van.

No Rowdies.

No Amanda.

There were no comforting presences inside his head, none of the chatter and murmurs he had grown accustomed to after over two decades of living in each others' pockets. No supernova heartbeat.

Martin was alone.

 

 

_The Homestead:_

The Revenant who was not a Revenant was smoking furiously through an entire pack of Doc's favorite cigarettes, seated on the front porch of the homestead. He had muttered something about the coat but hadn't taken it off – he had shivered upon opening the door, but hadn't wandered off, so Wynonna figured he wasn't too much of a danger. Yet.

"You sure this ain't some new crazy plan of Bobo's?" said Doc, lounging in the kitchen chair. "Could be a new scheme he's cooked up to mess with our heads."

"I'm positive," said Wynonna, raising Peacemaker and shaking the gun emphatically in the air. "No glowy bits, nada. No Bobo." She glanced out the window at the back of the white-haired not-Revenant. "But if he's here, where's Bobo?"

 

 

_A van, in the middle of bumfuck nowhere:_

"He ain't a Rowdy," said Vogel, at her elbow, as Amanda watched the not-Martin guy pace through the grass, plumes of smoke wafting by his ears as he smoked his way through one of Gripps' favorite packs. At first, she had thought he was _pleased_ to be there, but after he had wandered through the grass a bit, he had seemed… almost lost. Like he had suddenly seen the world, and saw he had no purpose in it.

 "He ain't normal, either," said Cross, and Amanda nodded. There was something _not right_ about the man, and not just because he looked almost identical to their Martin.

"Hey," she said, and the not-Martin looked up, blue eyes sharp and oh so familiar while at the same time nothing alike. "You got a name?"

He stared at them, then said, "Bobo."

Vogel giggled. "What kind of a name is that?"

The not-Martin – Bobo, if that was his name – said nothing, just huffed out another stream of smoke. Amanda sighed and took a step forward, halting when he tensed. "You okay?" she said hesitantly, and his eyebrows raised in question – one of them was discoloured, an odd white like the large patch in his beard, so unlike Martin.

Fuck, she missed Martin.

"Sure," he said. He was lying, she could feel it – she could sense it in the way her remaining Rowdy boys milled at her back, their anxious discordance telling her that someone close by was full of an energy they recognized as bad, that needed to be changed. She could sense it in the way he held himself, as if every move was choreographed – calculated to hide some stiffness in his movements, despite the predatory fluidity she had witnessed upon his first awakening in the van. "Who are you?"

 "I'm Amanda," she said, and remembered not so long ago a white-haired man in a van giving her introductions to a band of rowdy individuals. "That's Vogel, he's Gripps, and that one there, he's Cross."

"And you," said the stranger with a familiar face, "ride around in that van?" He didn't talk like Martin. Martin had an easy drawl, his words quick and clipped when they needed to be. This man spoke with a strange, not-accent, a mix of something north and north-er, with pauses as if he was considering how best to articulate a problem. Calculated, just like the rest of him. "Where are you headed?"

"Wherever we want," said Amanda. Her boys were oddly silent, as if the intruder in their midst unnerved them as much as he did she, and they had appointed her spokesperson without a word. "Where's Martin?"

 "I assume," said Bobo, "that he's wherever I was, since I'm wherever _he_ was." He smiled, and there was nothing nice about that show of teeth. "I doubt his welcome will be as warm as mine."

 

 

_The Homestead:_

“They’re coming back,” said Waverly, peeking out the window from behind the drapes. Martin looked up from where he was seated on the sofa.

“Who?” he said. He could sense a group of _someones_ encroaching on the property -- a mix of hostility and apprehension; a murderous energy.

“Revenants,” said Wynonna. Her hand was resting on the butt of her holstered gun -- the one she had called ‘Peacemaker’ -- and her face as grim. “They had someone bury a talisman on the property and we haven’t found it yet, so now they can all come and go as they please.”

“There’s three this time,” said Waverly. “They don’t look very happy.”

Heavy boots clomped on the wooden porch, scant moments before someone knocked loudly at the door. The two women exchanged glances before Wynonna opens the door, Waverly scrambling to lift a shotgun from behind the umbrella bin.

“If you’re selling Girl Scout cookies, we’ll take the Thin Mints,” said Wynonna as she opened the door. Over her shoulder, Martin could just make out the dark shape towering above her -- one that pulsed with a dark energy he couldn’t quite place, one that smelled _roasted_. And not in a good way.

“We’ve been patient,” said the Revenant, rotten teeth bared in a snarl, and lunged forward, knocking Wynonna’s gun-wielding arm wide and sending her sprawling on her back, on the floor, knocking the air from her lungs and the gun from her hand. The weapon skittered over the wooden floorboards, the noise of its passage lost under the report of Waverly’s shotgun.

Waverly cursed as the shot hit, but didn’t take -- Martin rose to his feet when he saw the Revenant stagger but seem otherwise unaffected, and the wild-eyed man gaped at the fur-coated Rowdy heading his way.

“Bobo?” said the Revenant in surprise, right before Martin stepped over Wynonna and gripped the creature by the throat. Whatever the man was, he wasn’t human, but he wasn’t a weirdo like the Rowdies were, like Dirk Gently was.

“Not exactly,” said Martin, and breathed in. He was vaguely aware of Wynonna scuttling across the floor toward her gun behind him, of Waverly’s startled yelp as the stream of blue-tinted energy leapt from the Revenant to whet his rising appetite, but he paid them no heed. He found the Revenant’s deep pools of energy and he took, and he took, and he _took_ , swallowing whole the ruthless, simmering, _delicious_ vitality, until the body in his grasp was limp and wobbly and he could toss the Revenant easily back through the open door.

Bonus points that the body smashed into one of the other Revenants, both of which took one look at their unconscious friend and at the growling Rowdy in the doorway, and bolted. They had the decency to drag their fellow Revenant with them, at least.

“Holy shit,” said Waverly, as Martin closed the door and glanced at his two provisional hosts. “What did you _do_ to him?”

“Neat trick,” said Wynonna. The gun was in her hand again, and he could taste her wariness, knew that what he had just shown her was something foreign to them -- she was still deciding whether to treat him as a guest, or as a threat, and he couldn’t blame her for it. “Care to explain how you did that?”

Martin wanted a drink -- the Revenant’s energy had left a bad taste in his mouth. The roasted flavour was no sweet barbeque, more of a burned corpse sort of taste, and it made him feel sick. He felt no remorse for the terror of the fleeing Revenants, however. Despite how little he knew of the Earp sisters and their world, he knew to trust his gut feeling, and his gut was telling him that the men who had come to the house and attacked Wynonna were bad news, through and through. “What, exactly,” he said, “is a Revenant?”

“That’s a long story, pal,” said Wynonna. “What was all that glowing magic stuff? Were you _eating_ him?”

Martin tilted his head, eyes watchful -- the influx of new energy, disgusting as it was, _had_ helped with his growing headache from the lack of proper glasses. “In a manner of speaking,” he said, and sat down on the sofa again. Looking up at the two gun-toting women seemed a little safer than standing over them. He had no reason to appear threatening, not yet.

Pain spiked through his skull and he snarled, hand raising to press against the worst of the ache at his temple. His Rowdies were in trouble, his supernova surging bright with frantic fear -- a burst of bright light in a chasm of darkness.

_He could feel them_.

 

_Elsewhere in bumfuck nowhere, outside a stalled van:_

 “That _fucker_ ,” said Amanda, kicking the driver’s side door open and climbing out, the Rowdies leaping after her with hair-raising howls. Bobo followed slower, still tense from the sudden halt of the van -- whatever the man standing in the road had fired at them had stopped the vehicle dead on the street. Amanda whistled, and the three men flanked her, all of them bleeding wariness that Bobo could almost taste on the air.

The man who had halted their forward progress took a step forward, replacing the weird wide-barreled gun that had stopped the van with an even stranger box, one with various tubes -- for a moment Bobo thought it was a handheld vacuum, but the way his new companions reacted told him that whatever it was, the device was definitely not a semi-harmless vacuum cleaner. The men growled and howled, and the woman raised a baseball bat, her fingers white-knuckled as she adjusted her grasp on the handle.

“Time to come home, boys!” yelled the man with the not-vacuum, and Bobo glanced at his companions. He held no love for them, nor for the approaching man; no allegiance had been made to either party. Nonetheless, those four wild-hearted souls had offered him a spot in their van until they found the missing Martin, and so far none of them had tried to shoot him.

This guy, though. He seemed to expect them to fall in line, and he leveled the nozzle of the weird-looking device at the group.

“You don’t touch them!” yelled Amanda, raising her bat, taking a leaping step forward to place herself between them and the advancing man, as if she could protect them with only a wooden baseball bat.

“He your enemy?” said Bobo, gesturing at the man, who was grinning maniacally and getting rather close.

“He’s bad news,” said the youngest one -- Vogel, if he remembered the name correctly. Little bird; he was full of a riotous, boisterous energy that Bobo rarely saw in the downtrodden Triangle. “Let’s smash his face in, boss!”

“Ain’t gonna go in no cages again,” snarled Cross, and Bobo’s eyes narrowed.

“Hey, don’t!” said Amanda, as Bobo strode past her. “He can hurt you!”

“I doubt that,” muttered Bobo. The man with the device had stopped, a slight frown replacing the manic smile, the nozzle of the black device rising to level with the Revenant’s chest. “Just passing through, are you?” he growled.

“Just bringing home all my little lost lambs,” said the man, and white gas spewed from the device directly into Bobo’s face.

Bobo hissed, and blew out a breath to keep from inhaling, eyes watering at the noxious chemical fumes. He bared his teeth in a humorless smile, reveling in the pure shock on the man’s face as the gas dispersed on the night air. “That ain’t going to work on me,” he said, aware of the excited murmurs of the van crew behind him.

“Impossible,” said the man. “What have you done, Martin?”

“Spoiler alert,” drawled Bobo, raising his hand and smiling widely as the metal in the strange black box responded to his call and shuddered under the man’s hands. He felt his eyes gleam with a demon fire, and smiled wide. “ _I’m not Martin_.”

“Holy shit!” said Vogel as the box flew skywards, wrenched from their attacker’s hands. The man swore and reached for a gun at his waist, but every metal object on his person ripped itself free with startling efficiency -- even the metal buckle of his belt, which neatly parted ways with the leather before sailing to rest in Bobo’s outstretched hand.

“These kids are my ticket home,” said Bobo, voice pitched low so only the man in front of him would be privy to his words -- although he had a feeling the Rowdies could listen in to whatever they had a hunger for -- and kept the same smile spread, easy and loose. “Can’t exactly have you jeopardize that.”

There was a hungry gleam in the man’s eye, and he, too, smiled. “I wonder what _you_ are,” he purred. “Such power. You may not be part of Project Incubus, but there’s always room for one more in Blackwing.”

The metal objects, which had been hovering just above their heads, whipped through the air with a satisfying scream to smash into the black SUV parked just beyond, the engine still idling, as if the man had expected hardly any resistance. “You’ll have to forgive my refusal for that invitation,” said Bobo, and grasped the man by the throat, lifting him off the ground with ease and grinning as the man grasped uselessly at his iron grip.

“Flaming shitballs!” said one of the Rowdies -- Bobo couldn’t risk breaking his concentration to figure out which one. The man was turning an unfortunate shade of red, mouth gasping soundlessly like a fish, and Bobo threw him toward the SUV, which made a satisfying _clunk_ and _thud_ as the man hit first the passenger door, and then the ground.

“We should go,” said Amanda, appearing at his elbow, and Bobo bit back the urge to snarl at her sudden, unwelcome proximity. She glanced at the fallen man, who was even then struggling to rise, impeded by the drag of his slipping trousers, which had given up their battle with gravity without the support of their main champion, the belt. “Fuck, how’d you _do_ that?”

His back ached from the exertion of manipulating so many little objects at once -- he had even bent the muzzles of the guns enough to prevent them being fired -- but the man was still alive, and his fingers itched to send one of the sharp-edged objects sailing into the man’s throat. Something about him screamed _wrong wrong wrong_ to every one of Bobo’s senses, and he hadn’t felt that sort of presence since the days of the demon sheriff Clootie. “Just a moment,” he said, but she grabbed his arm before he could take more than one threatening step toward the man on the pavement. He did snarl then, the Rowdies turning to regard him warily, but Amanda prudently snatched her hand back.

“Don’t,” she said. “We’re not killers.”

Bobo looked down at her, face impassive. There was still a reddish glint to his eyes -- he could see it reflected in hers -- and he shook his head slightly. “Maybe not,” he said, “but I am.”

“Boss said no,” said Vogel, and Bobo glanced at him, eyes razor sharp, and the brightness in the youngest Rowdy paled.

“I am not your friend,” said Bobo softly, “nor do I play by your rules.” Something grated behind him, the sound of a gun dragging over rough pavement and gravel, and Bobo realized he had turned too far in order to face the dubious van crew. He spun, raising one hand, but was only able to divert the bullet from his chest to his shoulder -- any further to the side and it would have sped right past him to sink into Vogel’s throat. Bobo snarled, blood soaking between his fingers as he clutched at the wound -- although it would heal, the bullet was still embedded in his flesh, and it _hurt_ \-- and raised his other hand, eyes burning with a hellish light as he _roared_.

“Shiiiiiiiiiiiiit!” said Gripps, echoed by Cross, as the black SUV skidded across the pavement to slam nose-first into the back of their adversary, whose smoking gun flew from his hands as he was once again introduced with some violence to the pavement.

Bobo breathed out, a strained noise escaping him on the exhale, straightening from the bent over position the effort had forced him into. His back ached worse than it had when he’d stopped Constance Clootie’s car, and it took him a great deal more concentration to bring his powers back under control -- the hand pressed to his shoulder lifted, fingers slick with fresh Revenant blood, and his eyes slipped shut as he ripped the intruding bullet from his shoulder.

"Can you teach me to do that?" said Vogel, bouncing with uncontained delight as he viewed the destruction Bobo had wrought. Bobo cast him a bored look, too annoyed with pain to bother answering – what he had done wasn't something to be taught. And, looking at the ragtag little group who were watching him with a mixture of respect and awe, Bobo wondered, for an instant, what it would be like to stay.

To be part of something that hadn't seen every broken part of his soul torn open, to finally cast off the shadow of Wyatt Earp that had haunted him for over a century. These were _good_ people – he saw it in the way they all moved as a unit to protect each member of the group, compensating without a word for another's weaknesses; how they laughed and smiled and mock-fought with no fear of serious injury. There was _love_ there, pure and solid.

But Bobo could also see that there was a piece missing, and his jagged-edged puzzle piece would never fit. He was a killer, born of a violent end and raised on a violent breath, and even as the Rowdies ushered him back to the van, which started once Gripps gave it a solid kick to the bumper, he knew that this reprieve from the curse, from the Earps, from the _Revenants_ , wouldn't last.

It couldn't last, because he was still a demon, and the one whose place he had taken loved, and was loved, by this odd assortment that had made their found family. The one they called Martin, whom they glimpsed whenever they looked at him, until he could see the disappointment rise in their eyes as they saw, yet again, that he was not the person they had hoped to see.

Fuck, it was just like riding with Wyatt again, wasn't it?

Wyatt had been looking for someone else, too.

 

 

_The Homestead, Ghost River Triangle, Earth, The Milky Way, Some Universe that Isn't Quite the Right One:_

"Maybe we can reverse the spell," said Waverly.

"You really want to bring him back?" said Wynonna. "I kinda like this one better."

 Martin cast her a baleful look eerily reminiscent of his harsher, absent twin, and Waverly sighed. "If we don't get Bobo back, we'll have a bigger problem," she said. "He's still a Revenant, and he's still the _leader_ of the rest of them." She pointed at the window, and Wynonna groaned as she peered out.

"Of all the days for Doc and Dolls to be in the wind," she complained, and unholstered her gun. "Hey, Martin, can you do that magic trick again on, um, maybe twenty of these guys?"

Martin joined them at the window and squinted – all he could make out was a moving clump of dark shapes converging on the gate to the property. Dammit, he missed his glasses. "It doesn't work like that," he said.

"Damn," said Wynonna. "We really need to find that talisman." She glanced at Martin. "Can you shoot?"

He stared blankly at her.

"A gun," she said. "Can you shoot a gun?"

"No," he said. "Not well." He could taste their apprehension – behind it was a fiery, unstoppable desire, a thrill that came with the expectation of battle. "Got a tire iron?"

"I have an idea," said Waverly, dropping a heavy, old book onto the kitchen table. The resulting upheaval of dust made Martin sneeze, something tickling his nose that wasn't dust. He sneezed again. "You okay, Martin?"

He took a step away from the book. "Fine," he said. Wynonna handed him a fireplace poker, the iron heavy and cold under his fingers, and he felt that same piercing feeling of _danger danger Rowdies are in danger_ before it faded again, quicker than before. He shook his head to clear it, breathing in and tasting an incoming rush of _bad news_. The Revenants, whatever they were, were flooding his senses with burnt flavours, soot and dirt and something old.

"We might be able to reverse the spell," said Waverly, jabbing a finger at a passage in the book. "Remind me never to take advice from a witch again, okay?"

"No problem, Waves," said Wynonna. She beckoned to Martin, who edged a little closer to the table, still wary of the old tome laid out on the wooden surface. It smelled old, too, and burnt in a different way than the Revenants did – a more electric singe than a smoldering bonfire. "What do we need to do?"

The door crashed open and two Revenants burst in on a spray of wood as the door hinges splintered from the wall, another four barreling in after them. "Time to finish this, once and for all," growled the first, eyes gleaming an unholy red.

Wynonna raised Peacemaker, and the muzzle glowed with odd, yellow symbols. Martin stared, feeling the brands on his arm burn in concert, a tingling ache that spread through his bones and became ice white as the bullet met the forehead of the snarling Revenant. The floor opened in a gaping, flaming pit and sucked down the screaming man, sealing off over the top of his greasy black hair and leaving no trace of his passing, not even a smear of blood on the smooth wooden floorboards. "Who's next?" said Wynonna, cocking the hammer of the gun again.

"Kill the bitch," growled one of the Revenants by the door. "Screw Bobo's plan – I'm sick of waitin'!"

Martin tested the poker by swinging it lazily over his hand, finding the weight satisfactory. "Only the gun puts them down good, right?" he said, to Waverly, who grinned, fast and sharp.

"Good observation," she said. Martin glanced at the book under her hands, at the green sparks trailing wherever her fingers brushed the pages, and wondered if she knew just what she was playing with. She looked over at Wynonna, who had capped three Revenants and was throwing battered copies of _Reader's Digest_ books at the remaining one in the doorway. The rest of them seemed reluctant to face her fury or the bright glow of her enchanted gun. "Give me your hand."

Martin looked down at his hand, saw the fading blue tint of the black marks there gleam brightly as she grabbed his fingers. "What are you doing?" he said, voice low. He itched to join the fight, ached to bring mayhem and destruction down on the entities of nauseating energy that swarmed around the house, but her grip was like the iron poker in his free hand – stalwart and unbreakable in that moment.

"Hopefully doing the right thing," said Waverly, and her dread was a heavy weight on his senses. She spoke, the words foreign and precise, a language older than the ancient book that smelled of rot and despair under her hands, and Martin howled as every part of him felt like it was being ripped apart.

 

_The Oh No Mobile, hastily parked on the side of the road, far past bumfuck nowhere and into the true wilds of the woods:_

Martin breathed in sharply, lungs protesting the sudden intake of air. The world was a haze of blurs that solidified as he blinked into anxious faces hovering above his own -- faces that were attached to the rest of their bodies, thankfully, unlike some of his weirder dreams.

“ _Martin_ ,” said a familiar voice, the one that was _family_ , and _right_.

“‘Manda,” he murmured, picking her face out of the blurry features of his family who were crowding him, patting his shoulders and grabbing his hands to pull him up into a seated position. Someone pressed a plastic-framed object into his hand and he groaned with relief as he pushed his glasses on, blinking as his eyes adjusted to properly _seeing_ again. “Well, ain’t you a sight for sore eyes,” he said with a grin, and all four of them shouted at his terrible joke and piled on top of him in a group hug.

Someone’s elbow was pressing against his ribs, an arm was wrapped around his neck, another arm had already knocked his glasses off-kilter, he couldn’t breathe properly, but he felt anchored in a way he hadn’t since waking up in an unfamiliar world. This was his family -- they were his home. Not the van, or the world…  just them.

“I love you,” he said, voice low and raspy with an emotion he had no name for.

“Don’t ever do that again,” said Amanda, her voice somewhere in the vicinity of his stomach. “And I love you, too, you big jerk.”

Martin laughed, a laugh that shook his whole body and was soon matched by the rest of the Rowdy 3, all sprawled in the back of the van in a tangled heap of arms and legs plastered to his own.

The chains dangling from the roof of the van jangled as they swung subtly in their direction, unnoticed by the happily reuniting group.

Well, most of them.

Martin shook his head with a frown, lowering his hand from where it had been resting on Cross’s shoulder, and smiled sharply when he saw the chains respond in kind. “Interesting,” he murmured, before turning back to his family. “So, what was this Bobo like?”

 

_Back on the Homestead:_

Bobo opened his eyes and found himself staring up at the ceiling, partially blocked by the edge of the table that he had apparently fallen under. He sat up carefully, masking a grimace when his back protested the obligatory bending. His shoulder still ached, but was healing fast, now that the bullet was out, and he was confident both aches would fade quickly. There was an abandoned fireplace poker on the floor to his left, and the kitchen was empty. He could hear yelling from outside, through the open front door -- multiple voices, high and sharp on the chill fall wind that stirred the window curtains, some of them vaguely familiar and one of them he could identify as Wynonna Earp. Most likely all of them up to no good.

Waverly screamed.

Bobo was on his feet and out the door in an instant, aching back be damned, a terrible growl rising in his throat as he burst through the door. Wynonna was without her gun and surrounded by nearly two dozen Revenants, all of them dissenters of his laws who enjoyed grumbling at any opportunity.

More importantly, Waverly was sprawled in the snow, her long hair fanning around her head as one of the Revenants advanced on her, flexing a hand that had presumably struck her bare moments previous.

Bobo stretched out a hand and summoned the iron poker, snapping his arm forward in one smooth motion to send the poker flying through the air fast as an arrow to drive into the hand that had struck his angel. The Revenant in question shrieked with pain, as the crooked end of the poker had done a fine job of wrenching his hand, arm, and the rest of him down to the snow, pinned to the earth by the iron rod. By the time the Revenant had raised his head to face his attacker, Bobo was already in their midst, breath steaming the air as he roared, _“What was my one law?”_

The Revenants cowered back, Wynonna scrambling to pick up Peacemaker from where it had been kicked into the snow as she ran for her sister, and Bobo snarled, eyes gleaming red and fingers curling as every piece of metal on the Revenants began to vibrate with his rage.

“ _Well?”_ he hissed. He could smell their fear, could see it in the whites of their eyes as they realized just how badly they had screwed up. “ _Who wants to be the first I drag over the line?”_

The Revenants fled.

Bobo let out a snort when one of them stumbled, all twenty-three of their number racing not to be the last over the property line. The white-haired Revenant made note of the last -- it was more than time to teach his underlings a lesson -- before he turned to face the Earps, both of which were back on their feet. The little kernel of fear that had dug its way into his heart, after first hearing his angel’s scream, finally dissipated. As did the odd smell of burned wood, acrid and unpleasant, that had clung to his nose since awakening, as the last of the Revenants disappeared into the trees.

“Is it really you in there this time?” said Wynonna, eyes narrowed and finger idly stroking the trigger of Peacemaker.

“Was _Martin_ not to your liking?” he said, and her eyes widened a fraction. So it had been a switch, then. Bobo wondered how much damage his near-identical counterpart had managed, but by the recent memory of fleeing Revenants, ones who had attacked the homestead against his orders, he could only guess that his absence had been noticed.

“He was a sight nicer than _you_ ,” said Wynonna, but holstered her gun.

“Hmm.” Bobo tilted his head, regarding them with blue eyes that still retained a hint of otherworldly red. “An apology is due, don’t you think?” he purred, and Wynonna glared at him. Waverly, at least, had the decency to look sheepish.

“It worked, didn’t it?” said Wynonna. “You’re not batshit crazy anymore, at least.” She paused. “Right?” He said nothing, and she let out an explosive sigh. “Fine. Sorry for casting a spell on you that kind of went wrong but worked out in the end.”

He could taste her annoyance, and he shrugged -- the moment for honesty was past, and he had other, more pressing concerns. “Let’s talk business,” he said. “What’s this you were selling about a truce?”

For all he hated the Earps, for all the pain and misery they had thrown equally upon each other, Bobo felt relief to be treading the familiar grounds of the Ghost River Triangle again. His brief visit to another world had been an _interesting_ jailbreak, but his fight wasn’t over yet. And with Wynonna, with _this_ Heir, he had hope they could finally bring down the one who had cursed them all so many years ago…

 

   

_In a cave, buried in earth, not as alone as you’d expect:_

“I disrupted their spell,” said the witch, crouched in the earth and making faces at every earthworm and bug that crawled along the tightly laced boots on her feet. “That gave us some time, but I fear they will find a way to lure Svane to their side again. He always was a believer in lost causes.”

“Robert Svane will bend to my will again, in time,” said the creature named Bulshar, the one who had once walked the earth under the name Clootie. His tomb was nearly unearthed, in his little corner of the cave his former wife had dropped on his head, and the demon smiled, the old skin of his mouth creaking as it stretched. “I have designs already at work for him…”

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all didn't ask for this.  
> I didn't ask for this.  
> Where did I go wrong


End file.
